This chapter provides a brief guide to installing Fireworkz on your computer.
Fireworkz may be installed on any version of RISC OS 3.1 or later.
If you have a pre-RISC OS 5 computer (i.e. RISC OS 3, 4 or 6), you may need to update your
!System
with 32-bit support modules before running !Fireworkz.
The latest distribution of !System
for use with pre-RISC OS 5 computers may be found on the RISC OS Open website at:
https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/common
under the heading System resources.
NB Do NOT use the standard merge dialogue in
!Boot – Configuration – System Merge
because part of the update must refresh files in
a directory that the merge dialogue cannot reach.
Instead, a simple Obey file is included called !SysMerge
.
Just double click on !SysMerge
.
The easiest way to obtain and install Fireworkz for RISC OS is using
!PackMan
. You will most likely find this application
in your Apps.Admin directory.
It is recommended that you select the following set of packages for installation:
Fireworkz
Fireworkz-Examples
Fireworkz-Manuals
Fireworkz
: The !Fireworkz
application
will be installed into your Apps.Documents directory.
Fireworkz-Examples
: The associated example files for Fireworkz
will be installed into your Apps.Documents directory.
Fireworkz-Manuals
: The Getting Started Guide and the User Guide for Fireworkz
will be installed into your Manuals directory.
Fireworkz Pro for RISC OS may be purchased from R-Comp.
Please follow the instructions supplied with Fireworkz Pro.
Before you can print from Fireworkz you will need to have a printer driver loaded. This is a standard piece of system software which your computer uses to handle printing for all applications which use fonts or pictures.
The first time you use a printer driver you may need to configure it for your particular printer. Please pay particular attention to the page size settings, which often default to American paper sizes, and check that they are appropriate for your printer and the paper you wish to use most frequently.
If the page size settings are wrong in the printer driver, in particular if they are too big, it is almost certain that when you print from Fireworkz, you will have problems with either your text being cropped (missing lines of text or characters from the top, bottom or sides of the page) or find that your printer keeps feeding through blank pages. Spending a little extra time at the start ensuring your printer driver is set up corrrectly may save you many frustrating hours of incorrect printing later on.